[Air-L] Religious Dimension of Sustainable Development

[Christian Fuchs]

Thanks to those people who have been bringing up these philosophy of 
science questions, I think they are very important for the grounding of 
Internet Research.

Charles Ess in my view has given a great overview of how positivistic 
knowledge that focuses on reductionism and the natural sciences has been 
challenged during the 20th century. In my view another important 
influence on the challenge of reductionism and positivism has been 
self-organization theory and systems thinking, because they stress 
emergent properties and are transdisciplinary in character, which can 
overall help advance the role of philosophy, social sciences, etc.

I think the important outcome is that philosophy, social sciences, 
ethics, etc. are taken more seriously today than in former times.

The main concern that I have about contemporary positivistic approaches 
is that they only focuses on how reality is, not as it could be, not on 
the inherent potentials that could be developed by agency, it is missing 
societal goals, question about totality, normativity, etc. - and through 
tsuch a focus on positivism academic thinking becomes uncritical. For 
Internet Research, I think this means whether one wants to strictly 
focus on empirical analyses of Internet usage, or furthermore considers 
critical theory, ethics, philosophy, etc. in addition as important 
groundworks. This then means if we should only ask the question "How 
does technology change society?", or also normative questions like "In 
which society do we want to live?", "How can sustainability be brought 
about?", "What are dimensions of "good ICT-society" (Gunilla Bradley)? 
"What is the role of critical theory in informational capitalism"? "Are 
there alternatives to the capitalist information society?" "Which ones?" 
Etc.
My personal opinion is that the second type of questions are very 
fundamental for Internet Research.

There is also one development brought about by the post-positivistic 
science that troubles me: This broadening of knowledge has also resulted 
in an increasing importance of esoteric, religious, spiritual, mystic 
thinking in science. Whereas I would argue, that metaphysics are needed 
in the form of an immanent transcendental view on society and in the 
form of dialectical thinking, I think that focusing on discussions of 
the role of God in the world, on mystic forces - as is frequently done 
today - is really a dangerous development because it brings about 
irrationality, "false consciousness", and manipulation, and that hence 
such esoterical forms of metaphysics are dispensable.

I wouldn't define religion as a focus on world-views, it is more than 
that, always involves a belief in God or another invisible force located 
outside of the material world and outside of society. I think the 
troubling aspect of religious studies and esoterical knowledge is that 
the existence of their object of study is already questionable.

Hence I think it would be better to argue that generally speaking not 
religion,  but a discussion of world views and philosophical issues is 
important for philosophy of science discussions, generally speaking and 
for Internet Research in particular.

Christian

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_____________________________
Univ.Ass. Dr. Christian Fuchs
Assistant Professor for Internet and Society
ICT&S Center - Advanced Studies and Research 
in Information and Communication Technologies & Society
http://www.icts.uni-salzburg.at
University of Salzburg
Sigmund Haffner Gasse 18
5020 Salzburg
Austria
christian.fuchs at sbg.ac.at
Phone +43 662 8044 4823
Fax   +43 662 6389 4800
Information-Society-Technology:
http://fuchs.icts.sbg.ac.at
http://www.icts.uni-salzburg.at/fuchs/
Managing Editor of tripleC - peer reviewed open access
online journal for the foundations of information science:
http://triplec.uti.at
New Book: Fuchs, Christian. 2008. Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Information Age. New York: Routledge. 408 Pages.
http://fuchs.icts.sbg.ac.at/i&s.html
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